★★★★ - THE POST
- Huppert is superb in this scandalous French drama -
“We don’t follow trends, we set them.”
Fiercely proud of her family’s cosmetic empire, Marianne Farrère (Isabelle Huppert) does not suffer fools gladly and sniffily dismisses any suggestion that the Windler Group isn’t still the globe’s leading brand.
Initially suspicious of her daughter Frédérique’s (Marina Foïs) desire to improve her mother’s “image” with a profile in Selfish magazine (because its “a chance to show people the richest woman in the world is a human being”), her mood changes when she encounters photographer Pierre-Alain Fantin (Laurent Lafitte).
His plain speaking, acerbic asides (“I’ve seen cheap mannequins in the toy department with better hair”) and unabashed flattery win her over. Pretty soon, he’s a regular fixture at the house, offering interior decorating and marital advice (suggesting husband Guy, a former Minister of Cultural Affairs is too “narrow-minded and cautious” for her), much to the chagrin of Frédérique.
She’s already upset at her mother’s flaunting of her wealth and her belittling of Frédérique’s own achievements, but having Pierre-Alain and his boyfriend accompany them on their family holiday is too much.
Marianne though, won’t hear of it, telling Pierre-Alain that “thanks to you, I’m living again, I’m emerging from my sarcophagus”.
It’s then that he presses his case for a 10-year contract for his “services”, worth 2m Euro a year. But when she vacillates, he begins very publicly casting aspersions as to exactly where her family’s fortune came from, while privately claiming to be protecting her interests.
Aided by long-serving butler Jérôme (Raphaël Personnaz), Frédérique seeks to expose Pierre-Alain’s duplicity and conniving ways. “He’s an arrogant vulgarian who respects nothing. He’s not a dandy, he’s a brute, a boore. A bastard of the worst kind.”
But all her outburst achieves is further ostrification from both her employment and her mother.
“Inspired” (an initial title card informs us that this combination of elements of fiction with a subjective view of reported events) by the real-life scandal involving L’Oreal heiress Lilian Bettencourt (as detailed in the 2023 Netflix docu-series The Billionaire, the Butler & the Boyfriend), Thierry Klifa’s (2017’s All That Divides Us) tale is yet more evidence of Huppert’s versatility and position as the current matriarch of French cinema. She is supremely compelling as the intractable, yet capricious Marianne. It’s a character to rival The Piano Teacher’s Erika Kohut or Elle’s Michele in her complexity (and potential polarisingness).
However, even she’s eclipsed here by Lafitte’s (The Count of Monte Cristo) scene-stealing bon vivant. The sole winner out of the movie’s six nominations at this year’s Cesars, the 52-year-old fully deserves the Best Actor accolade for delivering one of the most memorable “villains” of 2026 so far.
- James Croot, THE POST
The Richest Woman in the World is now playing at Light House Cinema!